ABSTRACT

The article explores the notions of children’s intellectual ‘ab/normality’ that were conceptualised in the context of emerging special educational measures at the turn of the twentieth century and the concomitant notions of child development. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the medical classification of ‘idiocy’ provided the framework for the establishment of different educational facilities, including special classes for ‘feebleminded’ children. The present analysis focuses on the allocation of pupils to these classes in Switzerland guided by the premise that a one-year-long trial period, during which thousands of children of the same age were observed in school, had shaped the notion of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ child development. This notion in turn provided the basis for assessing intellectual ability at the individual level. In other words, no scientific metrics teachers could use to separate the ‘normal’ from the ‘abnormal’ existed when this separation process began, but rather emerged from the process itself.

摘要

本文探讨了在 20 世纪之交出现的特殊教育措施以及随之而来的儿童发展概念的背景下概念化的儿童智力“异常/正常”的概念。从 19 世纪中叶开始，“白痴”的医学分类为建立不同的教育设施提供了框架，包括为“弱智”儿童开设的特殊班级。本分析侧重于在瑞士将学生分配到这些班级的情况，前提是为期一年的试验期，在此期间观察了数千名同龄儿童在学校，形成了“正常”的概念。和“异常”的儿童发育。这一概念反过来为在个人层面评估智力提供了基础。